by P. N. Elrod
“Cleaned out pockets, no labels, broken ribs—”
“That might have been caused by the weight of the earth on top of the body,” he pointed out.
“I don’t think that would account for the broken arm and leg bones.” Those had been only held together by the remaining flesh. “They’re old breaks, not new ones caused from our digging. We’ve been too careful.”
“Hm.”
“Check the position of the breaks; they’re close to the joints. Bones are thicker there. It’s more likely for a bone to snap here”—I pointed to the middle part of my lower arm—“than here.” I indicated a spot just below my elbow. “I’m thinking someone beat the hell out of this guy before they killed him.”
“Or he suffered a fall.”
“Yeah, onto a bullet. There’s two holes in the head.” Barrett had dug it out, but I’d carried it up to the tarp. “The one in his temple is this big, and the one in the back you don’t want to know about. Entry and exit wounds were made by a slug of no small caliber.”
“Good God.”
“Someone aimed the gun here—” I put a finger an inch above my right eyebrow, pointing down toward the back of my head.
“He might have shot himself.”
“If he did, then he aimed it funny. A suicide is more likely to put the gun muzzle on the side at a right angle, pointing upward like this. If the bullet comes out it would be through the opposite temple or the top of his head. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have aimed it funny because of the broken arms, but a killer standing over him makes more sense.”
“You are familiar with this sort of thing.”
I turned away and spat again so he couldn’t see my face. My familiarity with how a suicide puts a bullet through his skull was not something of which I was proud.
“We can look for this this cobbler and hope he can remember something helpful,” said Barrett. “Rather poor odds, I should think.”
“It leads to Manhattan, but there’s a better trail to follow.”
“Which would be?”
I hooked a thumb at the pit. “Who did the original tearing down and carting away seven years ago?”
“The same ones I rented the equipment from: Stannard Construction.”
“Who had access to this area then?”
“The household and whoever worked for Stannard. No one else was allowed through the gate. Mr. Mayfair diligently kept out the curious.”
“Who in the household would have a gun and a violent grudge against a man in those kind of shoes?”
“None that I know of.”
“So we check the construction company and find out a thing or three about what they do under the table.”
“They’ve been around for decades. If there was any spot on their reputation the whole town would know.”
“Doesn’t have to be the company, just one person working for it. Say he has a body to get rid of, what better place than a site like this? Miss Francher’s well-known as a recluse so there’s not much risk that anyone will ever dig the wreckage up once it’s buried. He could have brought in our friend over there, dropped him in when no one was looking, and bulldozed.”
“My God . . . ”
“What?”
“I wonder if Laura might have seen something of it. She could have gotten the idea to put Maureen . . . ”
I put a hand up. “Knock it off. There’s no knowing, and it wouldn’t help anyway.”
It took him a moment to get his mind back to current concerns. “Very well. We’ll speculate that some man associated with Stannard Construction did as you said. If that’s so, then why did they rent this equipment knowing I’d be doing the very thing they did not want?”
“The one who dumped the body could be long gone. Who did you talk to?”
“Mr. Stannard dealt with me personally now as he did seven years ago.”
“I could ask if he acted suspicious, but—”
“He was perfectly normal. Curious, of course, about my wanting to do the work myself this time.”
“Which you whammied out of him?”
“What a ridiculous word. I influenced him to mind his own business.”
“And by doing that. . .”
“Yes, I see. Even if he had the strongest objections to an excavation I’d have caused him to forget about them by default. Only I cannot see the fellow involving himself in such a illicit matter.”
“You know anyone else in his company?”
“No, why should I?”
“Then we change that. Let’s visit Stannard, you do your evil eye influence on him, and get some answers.”
“It’s far too late and much too early,” he said, looking up at the stars. “We’ve an hour and a quarter before dawn. I suggest we arrange lodgings for our poor friend there and get cleaned up. First thing in the evening tomorrow we will seek out Mr. Stannard.”
I checked my watch, and damned if he wasn’t on the nose about the time. “Lodgings? What have you got in mind, more snow?”
“There’s plenty about. Pack it around him and pull the tarp over all. It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”
It seemed better to not ask how he knew that. He either had some internal instinct about the weather or had read the forecast in a paper. I just wanted this night to end with me washing off the stink and burning my work clothes.
We got tin buckets previously used for hauling dirt, grabbed hand shovels, and mined nearby snow drifts. It was cleaner, faster work than our previous clawing around in the pit. In a short while the remains were under a couple feet of dingy white insulation. Barrett folded the tarp over.
“Can’t keep him there,” I said.
“I know, but there’s no deciding what to do about him until we learn more.”
We went back to the edge of the pit to see if we’d missed anything. It was a dangerous place, slippery, with shards of broken wood and nails sticking out. More than once I’d gotten caught on a nasty, mud-coated surprise, getting bruised or drawing blood. I’d taken to vanishing down there and re-forming up here to avoid the perils in between. With a grim amusement, Barrett had done the same.
“I hope that’s enough covering for the poor man,” he said. “It would be dreadful if some animal got—”
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
I blinked, or thought I blinked. My world was black, painfully cold, and something hideously heavy pressed my body from every direction, holding me fast. I was unable to move. Bolts of agony shot through me when I tried. A vivid memory of being buried in cement flashed through my sluggish brain, and the blackness dissolved to a familiar, weightless gray as I vanished.
Struggling to full waking, I felt around, encountering dense matter in every direction except for a collapsing cavity previously occupied by my once solid body. I didn’t know which way was up, then worked out the direction of the collapse and pushed toward it.
There’s a reason why I slip through cracks under doors rather than forcing through wood or walls: it’s hard work and unpleasant, the discomfort not confined to one point, but all over, even in places I don’t normally think about. Imagine dragging sandpaper through your liver if you want an idea of how it feels.
I moved too quick for claustrophobia to set in and oozed free, suddenly floating instead of fighting. The push of wind carried me a short distance before I resisted and made myself solid. I was spitting mad and didn’t care who saw it.
Rocking on unsteady feet, I glared around for an explanation and found the landscape had changed. Drastically.
The pit was gone, along with the equipment that dug it.
The hole was filled in, not as smoothly as before, but the job was done. Gouges in the ground led toward the driveway, indicating heavy haulers had done their job and taken away the earthmovers. The tarp and its ghastly contents were gone.
Barrett’s white Champion was also missing, as was Barrett.
That son of a bitch!
What the hell was his game? Ho
w did he think he could get away with this?
A blast of freezing air cut my bare belly. That’s when I noticed my borrowed working clothes were full of holes, literally shot to rags and soaked with my blood. I goggled at the incongruity. I could think of only one thing that produced this kind of damage.
I said what the hell again, several times, and tried to work out what had happened and why I’d missed it.
“Damnation!” roared Jonathan Barrett, Esquire, who now stood a dozen yards away on the other side of what had been the pit. He was coated head to toe with dirt, mud, and blood, his working clothes in a similar ragged state. Apparently he’d been buried, too, and had escaped the same way. I quickly discarded the unfair conclusion I’d jumped to about him being behind things.
“Damnation! Who would dare?” he demanded of no one in particular, as he’d not yet seen me. He staggered drunkenly a few feet, then dropped as his legs gave out.
My own pins were none too steady. Weak and hungry, I took my time ambling over.
Barrett stayed put. He was pissed as hell and visibly trembling. No one gets that mad without a profound fear to inspire it.
“Fleming?” He suddenly noticed me. “What the devil happened?”
I put a hand out to help him up. His grasp was icy and feeble. “Food first. Can you walk?”
He could and did, but leaned on me. It took a long time, or so it seemed, to reach the stables, then it was every man for himself. No fussing with teapots, cups, and saucers, we each picked a horse, bit into a vein, and fed.
The animals were long used to this kind of thing and stood calmly for it. Just as well, I didn’t have the strength for a fight.
I straightened and rested, leaning against the chest-high rail of a stall. The blood rushed through my empty body, warming me, filling up the corners.
Barrett finished his meal, faded briefly to reappear again, but still looked shaken. Vanishing takes care of physical damage, but it’s no help against emotional stuff.
“You okay?”
He grunted. “I was interred once, no need to repeat the horror.”
“You remember what happened?”
“I heard. . .I don’t know what. . .some kind of loud percussive rattle, but. . .”
“Like a machine gun?”
“I’ve never heard one except in films, but I think that’s what it was. You pitched forward and then I . . . ” He struggled, then shook his head.
“Lots of wood down in that hole. We must have cracked into it one way or another. No vanishing. Then someone covered up the mess.”
“In so short a time?”
“Take a gander outside, Barrett. It’s tomorrow already.” On the way in I’d noticed pink streaks in the western sky, remnants of what must have been a flashy winter sunset. Barrett had needed to be led in, his head down as he focused on walking. He must have lost a lot more blood. His clothes were shredded worse than mine.
He needed convincing and had a look, and it did not improve his mood. “How?” he wanted to know.
I shrugged. “We’re injured, knocked cold, and surrounded by earth. Maybe by the time we recovered enough to come around the sun was up. This being your home soil it’s no surprise you were out for the count, but don’t ask me why I took that long a nap.”
“Perhaps it’s earth alone that’s needed . . . but speculation later. We have been affronted. I demand retribution.”
“If that means some ass-kicking, include me in. Let’s go find this Stannard bird.”
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
We didn’t start right away; Barrett was resolute about feeding and watering his horses first, but it didn’t take long with two of us. I think he needed the exercise to work off the shock. Assuming me to be a city boy, he called unnecessary instructions. I saved effort and didn’t bother correcting him. I had my own dose of shock to sweat through and shoveled manure and threw down fresh straw without complaint. It had it all over digging up a corpse.
Once finished with the livestock, I asked him to point out my window, then vanished and floated up and in.
Hell, yes, I sieved through the cracks.
I stripped and had a shower bath. Some memory of events came back while the hot water battered the top of my head. Like Barrett’s, it had to do with sound. I recalled the sharp, ugly, hammering of a machine gun. Vaguely—and just as well it was vague—I knew I’d been in terrible pain, falling, and helpless. At some point I began to rouse out of it, but not quickly enough. Unable to take in its meaning, I heard the grunt and rumble of a big engine firing to life, then a black avalanche of earth blotted out everything, even me.
Yeah, I owed somebody some retribution, too, a whole lot of it.
I pulled on my traveling suit, coat, hat, and gloves, and went downstairs. Barrett was pacing the entry hall, disgusted.
“The cheek of them—they put my car back in the garage,” he said.
“Count your blessings, it could have been stolen.”
“Why bother?”
“Out front and visible from the road, someone might get curious why you left it there.”
“We were meant to mysteriously disappear?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“To blazes with that. By God, my poor horses would have starved to death before anyone came by to look in on me.”
“Better hire more help and make new friends.”
He gave a snort of annoyance.
He drove again, stopping the Studie at the site. I wanted a look around.
It must have been a clear, cold day. No new snow obliterated the tracks in the area, which were frozen and unchanged by melt. I’m no Boy Scout, but could figure out a few generalities.
“They walked in from the main road.” I pointed out two sets of footprints that left the driveway and slogged along toward the dig. “They kept the machines between us and just stayed out of sight, maybe watching the whole time.”
“While we did the work for them,” said Barrett. “We were doing a great deal of vanishing, what must they have made of that?”
“There was no moon; they could have missed it. I’ll bet they wondered why we didn’t use flashlights, though.”
“Both are men, do you think?”
“Unless it’s a couple of dames in extra large galoshes. Those aren’t walking shoes or hunting boots, see how the ridges go crosswise with no break from toe to heel?”
“Hm.”
I followed one set of prints that led to where a pile of earth had been before being shoved back into the hole. The prints got lost in the mess. I did find what I’d been looking for; the trespassers been careful, but not painstaking.
“What’s that?” he asked as I stooped and picked up a small, shiny thing mostly hidden in the crusty mud.
“Shell casing.” I brushed the brass off and dropped it into his hand. “From a forty-five. I’ll bet the farm that it came from a Thompson.”
